Once upon a time, a very smart publisher came up with a brilliant idea. It contacted Microsoft and got the ball rolling on a very unlikely project: Halo for Nintendo DS. Needless to say, there were many egos involved and unfortunately because of some issues that Matt Casamassina won't detail, the project was eventually cancelled. But not before it was completely up and running and fully playable. Matt knows all this because he recently learned of the back-story and got a chance to play a leaked build of Halo on DS for himself.

Above: a terrible mock-up of Halo on DS; the real thing actually doesn't look much different.

Amazingly, the ill-fated DS version of the title plays remarkably well. Think Metroid Prime Hunters but with a Halo facelift. Matt had the opportunity to run through the beginning beach area and noted while playing that it looked like Xbox Halo except on DS, it was running fast, and the control was responsive. The trademark Halo music even played out of the tiny speakers of Nintendo's handheld. It is really, truly a damned shame that certain publishers couldn't make this happen because it would have undoubtedly been a huge hit and would have only furthered the popularity of DS and the Halo franchise.

Now that DS is enjoying a clear lead over PSP and the Halo franchise is bigger than ever, Matt would like to see this game-that-could-have-been actually come to exist on the retail market. It's too good of an idea and the execution is too impressive to let it collect dust in the forgotten cabinet of a publisher's vaporware library.